


This is How it Ends

by brokenlittleboy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 06:37:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/910079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenlittleboy/pseuds/brokenlittleboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in a normal life, you can be haunted by the monsters of your past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is How it Ends

Sammy went missing when he was just barely eighteen years old, right before he was going off to college- a full ride at Stanford. Dean and his parents were immensely proud of their little boy, all grown up. 

Until it all shattered into a million pieces, that is. He had gone out for a walk, to think. There was nothing unusual about that, typical Sam behavior- but he had never come home. The whole of Lawrence searched for weeks. A broadcast searching for him was put out on a nationwide news channel. For awhile, there was hope.

They waited for a ransom, offered a reward, dreaded a  _body-_ but that was all they could do. Wait, and worry. 

 

But after 72 hours, the chances of finding a missing person drops to almost zero. When the 72 hour mark had passed them by, Dean couldn’t stand watching his proud and powerful mom weep openly, crumbing into their father’s arms. He was an expressionless man, whom you would mistake for a statue if it weren’t for the single tear streaking down his eye, the twitch of his mouth, as if he were about to break into sobs as well.

_It wasn’t supposed to be like this_ , Dean thought angrily.  _We were supposed to be happy. This isn’t fair._

Still they looked, though, going on huge “roadtrips”, keeping an eye out for their darling little Sammy. 

Lawrence had all but forgotten the boy, now only a name, spread from mother to mother in gossip, whispers of false empathy. The police had labeled the case cold. This town was the living definition of apathy to Dean. Why didn’t they care about Sam? The most important, geeky kid in the whole friggin’ universe? Why weren’t they crying themselves to sleep every night along with him?

It made Dean sick. He wanted to beat the snot out of every classmate who gave him empty sympathetic looks in passing. These people didn’t understand, never would. They couldn’t imagine what it was like.

Dean thought it couldn’t possibly get  _any_  worse, until it did.

His dad took to drinking himself blind, stumbling through the door at four in the morning stinking of whiskey and pain, two scents that smelled rather similar. He became a shell of a man, barely responding to Mary or Dean. They tried as hard as they could to rouse an emotion from John, tried to get him better, stop him drinking, but to no avail.

God, they couldn’t lose  _another_  family member. Dean feared his once-tough mother wouldn’t be able to hold it together.

He was struggling to be the glue holding them together, but god he needed them more than they needed him. John couldn’t keep this up, Mary couldn’t keep this up, and Dean definitely couldn’t, either. He was just a kid, not a superhero.

He prayed every night to an absent god to bring his Sammy back to him. To fix the broken, twisted  creature that had become his life. He didn’t expect an answer, but it was what Sam would’ve wanted him to do.

Then, one day, it all came apart, everything he had fought so hard to preserve. Dean’s parents got in a fight, an honest-to-god screaming match, for the first time in a long time.

It ended when John stormed out the door, swearing on everything he owned that he would never come back. The rattle of the door closing rather violently in the doorframe screamed of a terrible finality. It was achingly silent for a few moments, but then the familiar rattle of the VW van they owned echoed through the dark, sunlit halls. Through the window, Dean and his mom watched the car sloppily pull out of the driveway and speed down the road.

Dean tried to hug Mary, tried to whisper to her they could get through this together, but she roughly shoved him to the floor and stumbled up the stairs, sobbing. Moments later the lock of a door could be heard.

Dean’s whole world was falling into itself, irreparably. The crows cawing loudly outside mocked his very existence.

It got impossibly darker when a single gun shot fired upstairs, from his parent’s bedroom.

Dean found himself completely alone, cruising down the highway in a stolen black 1967 Chevy Impala. He clicked on the radio, to get rid of the deafening silence, but broke down into sobs of despair and pulled to the side of the barren road when  _Carry On My Wayward Son_  started playing.

_It’s just so hard to keep a game face on, Sammy._

For what felt like an immeasurable amount of time Dean wept in that old, shitty junker, head to the steering wheel and salty tears pooling on his jeans. 

_Hold it together_ , he told himself.  _They all broke, now you’re going to, too? What does that make you?_

Rubbing the wetness from his eyes, he got back on the highway and drove on through the night until he physically couldn’t anymore, stopping at a crappy motel way below his usual standards for a night of sleep. When he woke up he planned to keep driving. For how long and to where, he didn’t know. He just need to forget about what had happened to him. 

Inside the dingy room, with  _two_  beds, Dean avoided the sleep that would surely come with nightmares by turning on the old television. It crackled slowly to life, bringing itself out of hibernation, and displayed an old horror movie he recognized.

It had been Sammy’s favorite. Dean couldn’t understand the kids love of the supernatural. He preferred sports games and action movies over all of that science fiction crap.

He didn’t change the channel, though. The movie reminded him of Sammy in a comforting way. He kept it on, smiling faintly at memories of his little brother jumping in surprise and glee as the (in Dean’s opinion) cheesy monster popped out from behind a door.

When the movie ended, Dean felt empty, craved something more. That had been a good memory, one he had forgotten. Unintentionally he had begun the process of blocking out every single thing about his family. 

For the first time in around a year he didn’t cry himself to sleep, instead thinking of little Sammy toddling around his feet. He dreamt of his younger brother that night. 

Things were going reasonably well as Dean traveled around the country from motel room to motel room, making sure to check in just as a horror movie was played for the night on a movie channel.

When Dean discovered alcohol drowned the pain far better than stupid old movies, he found himself straying down the same miserable path his father had followed. 

His new routine involved going to the motel, then to the bar, then back on the road. 

On a particularly beer-filled evening, Dean drunkenly stumbled into his room and crumbled on the bed, shaking as droplets poured out of his eyes without his consent. 

“Sammy,” he choked, squeezing his eyes tight against the scratchy pillow as a strangled cry escaped from this throat.  _“Sammy!”_

When the tears had mostly subsided, Dean opened his eyes and stared blankly at the bedside table. Lying upon it, dusty and unwanted, was a single, empty postcard. 

_Visit Cold Oak, South Dakota!_ The shiny paper boasted.  _Claimed to be the most haunted city in America!_

_Sammy would like that,_ Dean thought, sitting up and gently picking up the card. He turned it over.  _Write about your experiences to a loved one below,_ it instructed.

So, shakily picking up a pen, Dean did. 

_Dear Sammy,_

_God, you stupid little bitch, I miss you. I miss Dad, I miss Mom. Where did you go, Sammy? Why didn’t you come home? Did the monsters get you?_

That line was supposed to be in jest, but Dean found himself wiping a drop off of the card and continuing.

_I would do anything to get you back. I would listen to you prattle on about Goosebumps for thirty years if that was what I had to do. I would go to Hell for you, little brother. It’s been rough without you. I even stole a car, how crazy is that? It’s nothing special, just an old Impala, but I can’t seem to get rid of it. It’s kind of grown on me, to be honest. Mom and Dad missed you so much, too. I take back everything bad I ever said about you. Life was so much better with you around._

Seeing that he was running our of space, he squeezed in small closing.

_See you later, your jerk,_

_Dean_

Feeling oddly sober, taking into mind he had downed around six beers, he went to bed feeling fractionally better than he had before. It felt good to talk to Sammy, even if it was a permanently one-sided conversation.

In a moment of clarity as the sun rose, Dean realized drinking would get him nowhere, except liver failure. Plus, what would Sammy think of him? He couldn’t bear to imagine his brother disappointed in him. Unfortunately he still needed  _something_ hold back the pain and shrink the hole in his shriveled heart. But what?

He thought back on the little postcard and the momentary peace it had brought him.

It was worth a shot.

At an old gas mart near his current hovel, he purchased a crappy notebook and swiped a blue pen from the counter. That night he wrote of Sammy doing just what he had loved seeing others do in the movies- fighting monsters.

He researched endlessly, looking for new monsters. He wrote of Wendigoes and demons and Rugarus. His stories depicted him and his brother, riding side-by-side in the weatherbeaten Impala, saving people and hunting things.

He wrote of the lengths Dean would go to to bring Sammy back: selling his soul, going to Hell, the Apocalypse itself. No matter what happened, what they faced, it always ended with the two brothers, in one piece. Together.

He became so absorbed in his fictional world he would stay in motels for as long as he could and write all night long of Sammy, growing big and strong beside Dean. As it should be.

He was writing about something called a trial when the television, on for background noise, caught his attention. 

_“…the kidnapper, 56, was successfully captured last evening after years of taking children. Multiple bodies of missing children, were identified, notably including Andrew Gallagher, Max Milligan, Ava Wilson, and Sam Winchester. The police say-”_

Dean shakily turned the television off, and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the blank screen incredulously. The whole thing was surreal. It was even more insane and impossible than his stories. He could scarcely believe it, didn’t want to. He’d rather believe in Lucifer. The silence seemed to eat the room alive.

He had always wanted to find Sam, but not like this.

Not from a fucking T.V. and not dead. 

A closed door had taken both his father and his brother from his life.

A gun shot had taken his mother.

And now a gun shot was going to take Dean Winchester, too.


End file.
